The Truth About Psychosurgery And What It Has Taught Psychologists

The history of medicine and psychology is always a fascinating subject, but psychosurgery is on a whole new level. The practice has a reputation for being violent, barbaric and traumatic, but is there more we should know?

Let's explore the history of psychosurgery and the impact it has had on the field of psychology.

Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash — This article was published as part of my The Dark Side of Psychology series where I talk about all the facinating case studies and dark experiments performed in the name of psychology.

Psychosurgery is the removal or cauterisation of selective neural pathways to improve psychological disorder symptoms. The idea behind this treatment is that if certain areas of the brain are responsible for psychological disorders, then destroying them will reduce symptoms and “cure” the patient.

The first form of psychosurgery was called a lobotomy and was developed by a man named Moniz.

Here is where it gets interesting…

Moniz was experimenting with the brains of chimps in 1935 when he noticed removing areas of the brain improved their temperament. He wanted to see if he could get the same results with humans who had an unfavorable temperament, so he drilled two holes into the skulls of schizophrenic patients.

He used sharp instruments to sever the nerves between the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain. He called this a leucotomy.